All of it has to do with the low quality of Halo 4. People just don't want to play it let alone invest their time into creating maps for it. Why invest time into something that you don't enjoy?
I believe insane spoke to this earlier but that's really a rather flimsy excuse. Halo 4 might not have the numbers of either Reach or Halo 3 but there still tens of thousands of unique players a day all of which could be potential new members for a well run site. Even if Halo 4 was the epitome of popularity that doesn't mean any more people would be signing up here if the site looked and ran like ****.
erwerw It's always more complicated than people usually want to admit or discuss. I don't believe there's any one reason, but rather lots of them: - Quality of the game. I play Halo 4 and don't hate it, but I think most now acknowledge it's either the weakest or second-weakest of the series, and has a built-in identity crisis that is a problem. - The sense of "same ol' same ol'" from forge - regardless of a few specific new features that are nice, the game mode has been largely the same since Reach came out three years ago, and you can't really make a map today that you couldn't make (more or less) in late 2010. Therefore, people lose interest. Why come here looking for maps when they all look the same? You have to be a specialist and a map-making enthusiast to appreciate the subtle differences between a good map made now and a good map made any other time since 2010. - The fragmentation of the forge community. In the time frame of late Halo 3 and early Reach, Forge Hub was the only fish in an exciting new puddle. Now that puddle is an ocean and it's teeming with other fishies. THC, Blueprint, xforgery (which came and went, but managed to take some members from this site away that never came back), and even more so YouTube channels like The Halo Forge Epidemic. A lot of players who download maps, and even many who make them, aren't really looking for a forum to "discuss" forge. They just want to find cool maps, and/or get some tips to do neat **** in their own maps. YouTube channels are instant gratification on both fronts. If a forum wants to compete, they need to also be a channel, and this site has consistently failed to mount any serious effort in that department. We're a dinosaur, and small mammals better-equipped to survive in the new world are skittering around our diseased ankles and eating our food sources out from under us. - The fragmentation of the FPS console community. COD won the war, but I don't pin that all on Halo's developers, past or present; it's simply a concept whose time has come and gone. It's still a mass-market game, but it's not the XBox-seller it used to be. More importantly, it's working from a model more than a decade old that players have moved beyond, and its efforts to keep up (while still trying to keep one foot in the past) are only pissing off its longest-term, most hardcore fans. Making a "modern Halo game" that competes with COD is an impossible task. Only by taking a few years off and then RADICALLY reinventing the franchise could they have a shot at it; the result wouldn't be Halo (in the sense that Grand Theft Auto 3 wasn't anything like GTA 1 or 2), but at least it wouldn't be a compromised thing trying to satisfy two non-overlapping sets of expectations. - The decreasing attention spans of today's gamer. Why play a game for 2+ years when you can play it for one or less, and move on to something new? This is one reason (though far from the only one) why COD is winning, and it's something EA Sports helped pioneer before it really came to the FPS crowd: rejuvenate your franchise with a new title year in and year out. Give them something new, even if it's basically a repackaged version of something old. And don't overestimate gamers' appetite for the new and novel, because they don't really want that; what they really want is basically the same experience with sharper graphics and just enough new window dressing that they aren't bored with it. Halo games are churned out on a clockwork 2-year cycle and sad to say, it's not fast enough anymore to maintain a loyal following; and DLC isn't enough to fill the void anymore, because not all your friends have it, and often times it's barely enough distraction to keep you interested for more than a weekend. - And finally, our own internal issues. Site hasn't been updated when it needed to be; front page content produced irregularly, when lots of our traffic stops at the front page; not maintaining good relationships with other popular Halo sites and 343i or Bungie; some bad staff attitudes and policies that chased people away; etc. You can't fix one thing here. You need to tackle as much of it as possible. And since a lot is out of our hands, you either do some kind of end-around (like opening up the site to franchises other than Halo, to name one suggestion only), or you live with diminished traffic that results from being tied to an ailing game series.
Maybe I am stupid but i still enjoy the hell outta this game, and I am bemused at how thw population has dropped off- especially old halo fans like overdoziz. It seems like people want the Halo franchise to fail sometimes. We had a great TCOJ lobby last night. It was a hell of a lot of fun and i know so many active forgers who are still trying to perfect their craft. look how much fun we had
Juanez - I think some of it comes down to people having different standards for the game that are very particular to them (like the MLG crowd - the game was legitimately not made for that style of play at all), and some of it is just nitpicking over annoyances that they can't let go. I don't think anything in Halo 4 is as consistently annoying as armor lock, bloom, or jetpack were in Reach. That really was a game that was almost ruined for me until the TU came out. However, there are aspects of this game that I understand why they bother people; it's just a question of if you can let it go and enjoy the other parts that are still enjoyable. Then there are the meta considerations that I don't think should actually factor in, but for some players they seem to anyway. Like whether they think 343i "cares" about them, or whether forge advanced enough from Reach to Halo 4, or whether the explosions in the game look like they took lots of dev hours or just some intern with five spare minutes on his lunch break. Some of this kind of stuff seems very inconsequential to me compared to the larger questions (do I like the maps, do I like the gameplay... 'nuff said), but others seem to talk about them incessantly, so I can only conclude that that stuff REALLY, REALLY matters to them, for whatever reason.
You know, for a website that's supposed to be about Forge maps, Forgehub sure does a good job at hiding them. On the front page there's a small button which directs you to a couple of featured maps for which you have to click another link to even see pictures of. The rest are buried in the forums, and not even at the top of the subforum list. The maps should be the focus for the front page and forums. Articles for contests or updates of the site are great and all, but people who are actually invested in the site probably already know about that. Making finding quality maps as easy as possible should be priority. The Forge Epidemic is popular because people can just quickly watch a video of a map and decide whether they like it or not. Once they've seen how easy it is they'll keep coming back and some of them will get interested in Forge itself.
Over, I think you are right, the maps just aren't the focus it seems. Trolling through a forum just to get to the map post section is a drag. Maybe the front page should be a massive spread of Map post thumbnails, so it looks like one of them porn site. Pornhub or Spankwire or somesuch. Then when you hover over the thumbnail it flicks through images posted in the thread- just like how it shows the lady in different kinds of holds and situations and stuff XD
Personally, I haven't played this game in months, not because I don't like it, I love it, I just kinda grew out of it. Oddly enough, I think that might've happened to alot of people. When I first started here (on an older account predating this one by a year) I was really into halo, I'd play for hours every night. But I just kind of matured and really don't even go on xbox anymore. I'm just not the gamer I use to be, maybe thats just me, but friends that I have that went through a similar stage are similarly indifferent to the whole thing. I only come here to look over nice maps, wishing I could be that creative, and post around in the more general topics. That being said, the game also isn't as immersive as Halo 3 was, imo.
New Age Of Forge Hub Accessibility is a huge issue imo, Say I'm a random I just wanna find a cool forge map to play on so I google "Forge maps" forgehub comes up top of list which is really good for the site so I click that get to homepage seeing all the front page news with generic copy pasted headers and random links in forgecast not knowing what anything means(If there lucky they will find the "Featured Maps" tab which is the last of all the tabs which just shows the same confusing stuff with generic headers and only Featured maps) then as a random I'm like **** it goes to youtube and finds THFE and subs there. My suggestions make front page have more maps with custom pictures to show the map to make it clear what the map is and clear how to view the map and download it, Then maybe have a "Forge Maps" tab on front page that is bigger or highlighted or something so people can easily see and go to maps from the front page then have that tab take you to a page that is a pictured list of most downloaded/most viewed/highest rated/newest maps of all the maps that can easily see what a bunch of maps are (Because most new people don't know what they want they just want to see a selection and having to choose "competitive maps/casual maps/etc" can be off putting and daunting) but have the option to get into the lists as it is now easy to find and get to when they become more acustomed to the site. And maybe make a official Forgehub youtube channel that can show off featured maps and TGIF montage clips stuff with entertaining informative videos with info that can only come from a "experienced forger" (Like "This map has great map flow because of its spawn area placement" not "This map is has a sniper spawn I like the sniper") but don't pump out featured maps just to get a videos they have to be quality maps. Just couple suggestions.
What on earth happened here? I <3 you, Hub. I may not be very active here anymore, but I'll see you to the end. You can be the Forward Unto Dawn and I'll be in cryo. I won't be chief, because, I mean, c'mon, but I'll certainly be a marine that snuck into one of the cryo-chambers when no one was looking. See you in a month. <3
Is there any particular reason for the latter? A more uniform color selection would look the best, IMO. If you're content with that, though, I would like to see the three tertiary colors used. As for user groups, I personally think only Administrator, Moderator, Content Staff (Journalist), and Premium are needed. TG and WG ranks are pointless. IMO, members should feeled inclined to write feedback because it helps the community, not because they will get rewarded with a special title.
The problem with that is, there isn't a big enough sense of community at the moment for members to actually want to help each other out, so no earnest feedback is being given anymore. What are your guys' thoughts on a "Feedback Staff" rank? Where those members are dedicated to giving members quality feedback, however make it clear that their knowledge-base and feedback wouldn't be regarded as the "be-all end-all," but rather helpful advice that should be considered when making changes to their map. This would theoretically be a means of stirring up more involvement in the Halo 4 maps section, because at the moment it's not receiving nearly the amount of attention it should be considering this is a Forge site.
Side note: Shouldn't this be in Customer Service or something? Not Halo General Discussion? Anyways, I didn't really think recoloring the ranks was really necessary because now I don't know what people do. I guess it's just a personal gripe though because I complain every time the colors change. Still pointless though. Also, you might not want to reconsider off-topic... Are there going to be any changes that aren't purely cosmetic? Changing a skin won't do a whole lot and I don't quite understand why people think it would. In fact, it alienates a lot of the people who use the older skins. I would still use super old school if it were still available. Changing rank colors won't really affect anything either IMHO, it never has. People motivated to do stuff will do it, while those who aren't motivated, won't, even with a new color. Excited for some of the unannounced things though...
I can understand the first segment of this but not the rest. The rate at which feedback is given has long since diminished, yes, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there are still members offering earnest feedback very often. With that said, I don't quite see how assigning said members (only some of them should they need to prove their knowledge-base) to an exclusive rank would remedy the root problem you mentioned initially. Sure, you can aleviate the knowledge-base requirement and award those that offer feedback with a title (ala, the Testers Guild), but that won't produce any results if, lik you said, members don't truly want to help each other out. Personally, I believe an emphasis on custom gaming is the key to reviving feedback and community participation (TCOJ is doing it right). With the inclusion of these "we'll do the work for you!" groups, members are harboring the misconception that they can simply post their maps and get the feedback they are looking for without any additional effort on their part. That's beside the point, though.